She is currently an associate professor of gender and women's studies and Asian American studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her first book, called The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages, focuses on the promise of “giving” freedom concurrent and contingent with waging war and its afterlife (Duke University Press, 2012). She also co-edited Alien Encounters: Pop Culture in Asian America (Duke University Press, 2007) and co-writes Threadbared, a research blog on the politics of fashion and beauty. In 2011, she became an active collaborator in the POC Zine Project (founded by Daniela Capistrano), scanning and distributing both issues of Race Riot online and organizing donations of zines by people of color to academic archives and zine libraries. In September and October 2012, Nguyen went on the first POC Zine Project/Race Riot! Tour, with Mariam Bastani (Maximumrocknroll), Anna Vo (Fix Your Head), Osa Atoe (Shotgun Seamstress), and Cristy Road.